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Textile Recycling: Big Opportunity or Risky Business?

French engineering giant Technip Energies builds oil refineries and liquefied natural gas platforms. Now, it’s aiming to establish a $2 billion business regenerating polyester.
Bales of clothes tied with string are piled up next to each other.
French engineering company Technip Energies wants to build Reju, the textile-to-textile recycling company it launched last year, into a $2 billion company by 2034. (Shutterstock)

French engineering company Technip Energies has helped build some of the world’s most technically challenging fossil-fuel infrastructure, including platforms to pump natural gas out of Arctic waters and mega-scale oil refineries that transform crude into building blocks for plastics, like fashion industry mainstay polyester. But the company is eyeing new opportunities: over the next decade, it aims to become a leading player in fashion’s efforts to develop textile-to-textile

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Further Reading

Fashion’s Plastic Addiction in Four Charts

Cheap and versatile polyester has underpinned both the fashion industry’s growth and its worsening environmental footprint. Efforts to switch to recycled fibre are stalled, new data show.

Fashion’s Virgin Plastic Problem

The industry needs to ditch its reliance on fossil-fuel-based materials like polyester in order to meet climate targets, according to a new report from Textile Exchange.

Can Fashion Live Without Plastic? It’s Complicated

Last month, Boss’s runway show in Milan featured a trio of limited-edition jackets made using a new fibre designed to replace polyester. But untangling the industry from a material that has played a central role in its growth will be a tricky business.

About the author
Sarah Kent
Sarah Kent

Sarah Kent is Chief Sustainability Correspondent at The Business of Fashion. She is based in London and drives BoF's coverage of critical environmental and labour issues.

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